Roundabout open house is Dec. 12

May I have the floor for a moment?

I heard about this roundabout idea awhile back and I was hoping it was a joke. The intersection of Hwy 15/North High Drive is the worst spot for a roundabout. Is the truck traffic going to be rerouted elsewhere? I would love to see semi after semi slow down the traffic while trying to meander through the curves. And not to mention Grandpa Slowsky running into someone because he doesn't get how to merge and/or yield. Was the expense of "Hutchinson's first roundabout" worth it? I have my doubts.

Mr. Exner, this is not Europe. It's Hutchinson. Minnesota. The United States. But wait, I guess the American way is to waste as much tax money as we possibly can. Have you checked out the dam project? A million dollars so fish can swim upstream? Give me a break.

I am no longer a resident of Hutchinson. I grew up in Hutchinson, my family still lives there. People laugh when I tell them about the city monopoly and the ridiculously high property taxes. And while I'm on a roll, what's the deal with the 30mph speed limit on Hwy 7 in Hutchinson? New highway+more lanes+long stretch of road with no stops... should equal a higher speed limit. I don't even have an engineering degree.

Residents of Hutchinson, I urge you to go to this roundabout "open house" and ask lots of questions. I urge you to speak up and keep a better eye on YOUR tax dollars before another bogus idea like this reaches the city council.

Thank you for letting me express my opinion.

Putting a roundabout in this spot is ludicrous! What ARE these planners thinking?

There is your solution right there....turning lanes. There is room for them each way. That would help out that intersection a bit.

Here is the way I look at it....you have a state highway and a frequently used road that turns into a county road. I think of another section like - Bluff and Highway 7 - would you have put a roundabout there before the construction? No. Why, because of the amount of traffic. It's the same thing at this proposed intersection.

Having grown up in the cities, roundabouts aren't used on highways. They are used in neighborhoods and in other light traffic (no semis or trucks) areas. My best example is at the new development at Grand and Excelsior in St. Louis Park. It's a shopping area, not a highway. They even use stop signs on that roundabout.

Well, fellow co-worker, roundabouts actually are used on highways. Travel Highway 19 a few mights east of New Prague sometime. There is a roundabout there that handles roughly the same amount of traffic as Highway 15/North High Drive. I remember when state engineers talked here about that intersection. Crashes were down drastically, especially those with severe injuries.

We actually once had a video link on our Leader Web site showing that intersection and semi-trucks, straight trucks, buses, pickups with trailers, and regular cars were negotiating the roundabout with ease.

I haven't seen the plans for the new proposed roundabout, but it likely will be larger than the Montana Street/Fifth Avenue Northwest roundabout constructed in 2006.

(By the way, Jill_G, the project is more MnDOT's responsibility than it is City Engineer Kent Exner's. MnDOT is likely driving the car on this idea.)

Anyway, the Highway 15/North High Drive intersection has been the site of many collisons in my 23 years in Hutchinson, some of them fatal, and almost always involved someone getting rear-ended at high speed or crossing the highway on North High Drive. Turn lanes would help those making left turns from the highway to North High, but would do nothing for those crossing the highway, which many do going to and from work at HTI. (

(Note, I say collision or crash, not accident. Police will tell you there are almost no collisions that are truly pure accidents. One or both drivers did something improperly or did not do something properly in almost all cases that contributed to the crash.)

The other option would be full signaling. But do we really want to add another set of stop lights on Highway 15? There already is talk of signals at Airport Road and perhaps Fifth Avenue South. That would mean 10 sets of stop lights traveling through Hutchinson on 15! North High Drive would make 11! Highway 7 has only three. I've driven through a lot of cities Hutchinson's size in Greater Minnesota and can't recall any town with that many stop lights on one of its major arterial streets through town. Signals really slow your trip down.

Signals don't eliminate all crashes. If they did, we'd never have crashes at South Grade Road, the three intersections downtown or at Highway 7. But we still have plenty of crashes there because people still run red lights or rear-end someone because they aren't paying attention, are speeding or talking, are their cellular phone or adjusting their radio.

Another drawback with signals is that because you may have to stop at nearly every one, you are burning a lot of gas idling and accelerating. Roundabouts cause you to slow, but unless someone is coming from the left and causes you to yield, you don't have to stop. It might seem minor, but a small savings in gas multipled over several thousand vehicles a day, every day of the year, results in a substantial savings. Roundabouts also don't require electricity to run signals nor require the ongoing maintenance of signals (Ever notice how often stop lights seem to be malfunctioning downtown!)

But perhaps more importantly, according to highway engineers, roundabouts are, by design, safer because crashes (which occur less frequently) are generally glancing, sideswipe varieties less likely to kill than the t-bone crashes that happen at normal intersections because someone ran a stop light or red light.

It will be interesting to see what the plans are. I suspect the intersection will have to push out to the west a bit to get the radius in place. It is limited to the east by the gas station and home there.

I agree that I don't believe the City of Hutch is driving the bus on this decision - the State of Minnesota has the most influence on this one!! But again, the State is most anxious to spend our hard earned tax money on something that personally I don't think will work. I drive through this intersection on a daily basis (twice). How about a simpler solution? How about a four-way stop (similar to what is in Kimball - Highway 15 and 55 intersection)? Everybody has to stop and everybody takes their turns driving through the intersection. Of course, it may be necessary to provide left hand turn lanes but the cost would be substantially less than this turnaround (not to mention buying the land to put this in place).

I work at HTI. During the construction on Hwy 7, North High Drive was the best way for me to get there, but I often found it to be extremely difficult to cross Hwy 15. Many times there were more than 5 cars lined up on each side waiting to sneak across. Occasionaly, a westbound car would enter the Outpost lot and exit further north onto 15 in an attempt to then make a right turn onto North High...an illegal and dangerous maneuver which would also serve to infuriate the law abiding drivers waiting at the stop sign. I was surprised not to ever witness a serious collision.

Now that construction has been completed, the problem is less severe, but still exists. There is little reason to doubt that traffic congestion will continue to increase.

Bottom line: Something has to be done. A stop light would be at least as expensive as a roundabout. Terry listed some very valid arguments against adding another light to that intersection. Four-way stops are terrible for traffic flow, and in my experience many Hutchinson residents are either unfamiliar with the rules of a four-way stop, or just don't care about jumping ahead of another vehicle that has the right of way. Roundabouts may be unfamiliar to some, but are not at all difficult to navigate if you use common sense. They are effective at keeping traffic flowing, and reducing severe crashes. I'm all for reduced government spending where possible, but think this plan makes a lot of sense.

I also had to cross Hwy 15 at North High Drive every day last summer because of the detour and very much agree it was a real dangerous venture. Something definitely needs to be done with this intersection. Four way stops can be maddening in heavy traffic, its stop-go-stop-go and hard on the vehicle and the driver's patience. And how many times have you ever sat waiting on a red light and there's no cars in sight? The nice thing about a roundabout is when there is little or no traffic you can breeze right through without stopping.